Miners and Shovels

There's that old adage about how the guys who made money in the gold rush weren't the miners, but rather the guys who sold the miners the picks and shovels. Well, there's an impending gold rush into space tourism, with various people getting into launch industries, but I think this is the guy who's selling the picks and shovels.

Launch industries are going to be very cost-sensitive and competitive. Once the sub-orbital tourism concept is proven, the rush will be on to get prices down as far as possible, because the lower the price, the larger the market. That means lots of new investment in technologies to make it cheaper and safer, and lots of new companies going out of business. The same dynamics ought to apply when they start going orbital. It's going to be a very tough market to succeed in, long-term.

Bigelow, on the other hand, is light years ahead of all competitors in the one area of technology everyone going into orbital space will need -- habitat. Everyone will have to come to him, he'll have very little competition for a long time, and he can pretty much price his product how he likes.